


Agnus Dei

by honeybun, KonaKona



Category: Pilgrimage (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nature
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2020-04-23 14:16:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19152724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeybun/pseuds/honeybun, https://archiveofourown.org/users/KonaKona/pseuds/KonaKona
Summary: A series of small fluffy snippets for David/Diarmuid. Title means "lamb of god"





	1. after the pilgrimage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A sensitive Diarmuid has difficulties settling back into the monasterial life after the horrors he witnessed during the (failed) pilgrimage. Fortunately laybrother David is a source of comfort.

It was after they had returned. The relic somewhere deep in the ocean, plucked at by passing fish, his brother’s long gone, and a fair few he wouldn’t want to see again gone too. 

  
It had been strange returning to the monastery, David healed after many months of changing his dressings and fervent prayer in thanks passing Diarmuid’s lips multiple times a day. The two of them had grown closer, or closer still he might say. He felt almost mute himself - the time passed between them with fewer and fewer words exchanged, but touches, gestures, the meeting of their eyes became enough. Diarmuid felt something had changed in him in those months. He wasn’t entirely himself, quietly helping out in the household that harboured The Mute - David - and himself, although he yet didn’t feel wholly not himself either. He had not kept strictly to his duties as a novice, he knew he had not, but all of those things seemed to slip sideways in his mind once David needed anything. Once he had been hurt Diarmuid only remembers a painful fog, sticky blood on his fingers, the taste of iron and salt, the sound of David.  
  
Returning felt more than a little strange, to be somewhere so other, and then transported back where you began. He tried his best to continue as he should do - how his brother’s would have wanted him to - he continued his work in the Scriptorium, and continued his studies in herbs. He looked at his own writing in the margins of instructions and squinted, he didn’t recognise this person. It felt as if he was a ghost, silently haunting an absent figure of his past self, finding traces of him here on the thin parchment, or in the small set of belongings he had left behind. Now, it wasn’t that Diarmuid found himself so entirely experienced now, he didn’t feel grown. Quite the opposite. He had seen the outside world, had lived through what could only be described as a series of tragedies, and he was afraid. While the same old curiosity still lingered within him, whenever he would get close to the outside walls of the monastery a hand would tighten around his heart and squeeze. He had found himself shakily panting by the stone walls several times, little recollection remaining of how long he had been there.  
  
When he feels like this he knows what he wants, knows just what will make the hand grasping his heart slacken and retreat, but it takes some time to allow himself. In the months that had passed since the incident on the beach, David and himself had circled closer and closer, nearly losing David had caused Diarmuid to cling to him, and he hadn’t yet learned how he might let go. Sometimes, after bathing and dressing his wounds, Diarmuid would find himself in a sticky, honey sweet daze at the foot of David’s bed. His hands sometimes stroking over the disappearing wounds on David’s skin - his fingers rubbing at his knuckles in a bath of warm water and thyme. He would look up at David the same way as he always did, shoulders beginning to slump, the weight of the world pulling him down, down, until he felt David’s large hands on his shoulder blades, picking up and-  
  
Diarmuid tries not to think about it during the day, if he stops himself from thinking about it until before lunch, then he must attend to the brother’s meals, and his own, and an afternoon’s work will make him forget. If he resists his thinking until bed, this is sometimes better or worse, depending. Sometimes it means he is so tired he will sleep without a thought of it, and others he will lie awake, wanting, needing, a terrible whine building in his chest, and heavy gasps threatening to leave his throat. If he squeezes his eyes and counts to twenty, and then starts again, and again, and again, and again, then maybe he will sleep.  
  
It doesn’t always work. And recently, six weeks having passed since they returned, it hasn’t worked often. He had thought the outside world had caused it, his fear of the unknown, the weapon surely hiding in the back of someone’s pack, hearing foreign voices, the stamp of strong hooves, but no.  
When Diarmuid finds himself in a bad way, having counted to one thousand and forty, there is only one thing to do. He closes his eyes and steels himself for a moment, trying to assert some discipline over his fluttering heart, but to no avail. And so he quietly swings his legs out of his bed, and gently pulls over his cowl. There is no need for shoes at this hour, and they shall only make noise. Diarmuid worries that his planning of this moment - and the subterfuge around it, must surely mean it’s more wrong than even he realises. However he perseveres.  
  
It is a short trip from his dormitory, passing several open squares, the kitchens, until he comes to where the laybrother’s sleep. David sleeps alone, he knows this, he knows this intimately. He sleeps in a room wedged between the kitchen and the outside of the dormitories. Diarmuid had felt smug with this information, for he believed of course that his- that DAVID should be set apart from the rest. But that was no matter now, only of interest so that Diarmuid could be sure not to wake anyone else when on his midnight errand. If you might call it that.  
  
He knows David will be awake too, there’s no chance of sneaking up on his clever David. He will have heard the pattering of his feet even if Diarmuid barely noticed it. Diarmuid wonders if he knows the sound of his specific footfalls already, it makes him blush to think that the answer is likely yes. David’s room is relatively well appointed, for a laybrother. But he has been here much longer, worked much harder and therefore earned this one comfort. There is a small fire crackling in the small grate, as Winter threatens them more and more each passing day. Diarmuid hadn’t seen David as much, not now he is preparing for the long Winter, surely that’s where this ridiculous need came from, just an old anxiety that David might have disappeared as he was looking away, nothing unusual.  
  
Nothing wrong.  
  
Various tools were hung up on the wall, and hunting paraphernalia cluttered a corner of the room. David’s bed rested close to the ground, and covering it was the usual woollen blankets, as well as a sheepskin throw that Diarmuid, shamefully, knows is intended for him. David is sat on his bed, night things slightly rumpled, and hair curlier on one side. His large forearms rest against his legs, liberally dusted with dark, wiry hair. His head lifts as Diarmuid makes himself known, now biting his lip and letting the toes on one of his feet curl underneath him, suddenly shy.  
  
David leans back then, shuffling his legs underneath the blanket, rearranging his pillow to allow more on the far side, pulling the sheep skin throw on top of his long legs. Diarmuid thanks him silently for the kindness, he is not ready, he does not know how - to be watched as he does this. David knows what he needs, and he needs to feel this is normal, so ordinary that there’s no reason for David’s eyes to linger on him as they should want to, or coax Diarmuid towards him with an outstretched hand. Diarmuid blows out the candle which must have been hastily lit as his approaching footsteps were heard, he goes to put a guard around the grate and the room is suddenly in a deep darkness. He doesn’t know why this room is different, the dark in his dormitory feels cold and never ending, this feels like a velvet, the small hiding place you sook out as a child. He does know why.  
  
The bed creaks as he climbs in, one knobbly knee on the edge, a hand cautiously searching forward for a flat plane. He falters as the mattress goes on for longer than he imagined, and free falls for a moment until, ah- warm hands hold him up, had found him even in the dark, they circle around his wrists and Diarmuid feels a cry building in his chest. He melts into the bed. The hands disappear, but Diarmuid is certain - only in this - that they will return.    
Diarmuid feels his heartbeat begin to settle, like he just stepped back from a ledge, a gaping abyss disappearing from view. He pulls the edge of the blankets over his form, and can feel a warmth emanating from behind him.  
  
They had done this for months. Whenever Diarmuid had found himself overwhelmed, he had come to David in his sickbed and he had done this. To more or less success depending on David’s manoeuvrability on that day. As he got better he could be held closer, David’s fingers working again to brush aside a stray lock of hair on Diarmuid’s forehead. Now, in these stolen moments, Diarmuid knew the feeling was as close to heaven as he had ever gotten. Diarmuid didn’t even count when he was here, but he knew it hadn’t been long until he heard the faint rasping of linen and wool, and then a warm hand on his stomach pulling him closer.  
  
Diarmuid couldn’t help himself, he turned around, faced with David’s strong features. His kind brown eyes, his thick eyebrows which pinch together in question, his large nose that Diarmuid wants nothing more than to nuzzle against- “It’s getting worse-“  
  
David shushes him, short and comforting sounds from his lips, Diarmuid feels his voice catch and register even higher, “I can’t sleep-“  
  
Diarmuid shakes his head, tears already stinging his eyes, desperate to blurt everything out to David now he’s here, now he’s dared come. “Dee, shh, shhh” His name. The deep hum that comes from David’s chest is just for him, he’s the only one to hear David talk, the only one, just him, just him, just him.  
It had been the first thing that had crossed his lips as he lay half dead on that beach, and continued to be the only thing uttered on the long and painful journey to a physician. Diarmuid had turned to Diarm, and that too Dee, sometimes, if he was blessed.  
  
Diarmuid lets out a sigh that had lodged itself in his rib cage for a week now, it rattles through and ends in a small whimper. This gets warm, firm arms surrounding him, so tight and strong that Diarmuid’s eyelids flutter shut. David’s legs lay over his and he feels wonderfully, blissfully, trapped.  
“It all scares me, David..” Diarmuid peters off, hiccups coming forth now, voice a whisper as a large hand strokes the curls at the nape of his neck.   
  
“It’s too much,” he croaks out, just before being enveloped entirely in David’s scent, his warm, healthy, body. David had put him where he had wanted to be, the crook of his neck, which seemed to industriously create a scent immediately connected to comfort Diarmuid. Small hands scrabbled around David’s back, which was a little too broad to hold comfortably, and so his hands came to crowd near Diarmuid’s mouth.  
  
Despite his best efforts, his eyes began to close, and so too did David’s hands and fingers begin to falter on his back, his thin neck. The two of them rearranged around each other minutely. Diarmuid tucked his feet neatly between David’s. David had looked after him, more than that, he had saved him. Surely it was normal, or surely, perhaps, he couldn’t be blamed, for feeling like this. For needing this closeness.  
  
Sometimes Diarmuid thought that David was as close to God as he might ever get. Unbeknownst to him, David thought the same of him.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These were written by my gf honeybun on AO3. Spread love in the comments, y'all.


	2. Diarmuid the Herbalist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diarmuid is Ciaran's apprentice in the monastery garden and has a gift for Laybrother David.

David accompanies Diarmuid to the kitchen where he’s making up his balms and oils. David has brought him all his ingredients and the novice is chattering away about how he must have worked hard to get them.  
  
“So you must have gone to the coves for these heather branches, hmm? And the brook down the South end of the river for those mosses...” David listens and his chest expands with warmth as Diarmuid notices all the little things he’d done and the effort he had expended for his sweet Dee.    
  
“Smell this, Dovi-“    
  
Diarmuid held up a muslin cloth twisted at the top with a bulge of herbs and plants. David leaned forward, quite used to this routine now. This one smells different, muskier, deeper, like the dark woods and the salt of the sea. He can’t imagine Dee wanting to wear it, the boy always smoothes lavender oil over his curls and at his neck. Creams made from rose water and honey.  David smiles and nods, questioningly gesturing at Diarmuid.  
  
“No, no, not for me, Dovi.”    
  
He carries on with a small smile on his face, busying himself at the stove. David sits back again in his chair and lets himself indulge in watching Dee, his small form flitting from one end of the counter to the other. Slim hips curling around chairs and the large table.  
  
“There! I’m done, David-“ Diarmuid often used a singsong voice with David, close to his high calls during choir.  
  
Dee thrusts the cooling balm towards David, not yet stoppered in its glass jar.  He is beaming.  David frowns and leans forward again, the smell enveloping him and somehow transporting himself somewhere cosy and safe, a deep cave underground with a crackling fire, the smoke tickling his nose, the depth and salt of the sea, the musk of a misting morning on the hills. David is loathe to give it back, but Diarmuid must have used all of his own personal supplies...   
Diarmuid pushes the jar back to David with an excited look. David frowns again.    
  
“Dovi- Dovi it’s for you!” Diarmuid giggles, hand coming to rest on David’s larger one.    
  
“I- ah, well, you know how we’d talked about birthdays? Well I decided today should be yours maybe? If you don’t know and-“ Diarmuid got a concerned look on his face that only came when he was worried he’d overstepped and done something silly.  David could remember Dee talking about his birthday, explaining in detail that it wasn’t particularly important for monks, but since he was quite the adored little thing in the monastery, Diarmuid has a little present here and there, some fruit in his porridge. He’d been asking David for his, but he hadn’t known. It wasn’t important, all that was past was past.  David can feel the back of his throat tickling, his sweet Dee... Diarmuid has stopped blabbering and has started twisting his fingers together, “I should have asked, I always forget what the brothers tell me about being too proud and-“   
  
David reaches up to cup his face. He’s chanting in his head, “My dear, my Dee, my darling. Thank you,” and hoping Diarmuid can hear, can see.  They stand still for a few minutes, David’s hand strays to playing with Diarmuid’s curls. “Can I- Can I put some on you?”    
  
David is not unfamiliar to this, and his eyes slide shut at the thought, his legs part a little to make room for Dee who doesn’t need to wait for an answer.  “This is my favourite - I made it specially for you. Don’t let me keep you all day, though, I can’t let myself get distracted. All the time.”    
Diarmuid lets his clever fingers dip into the nooks of David’s collar bones, to ring around his shoulders. When David lets his head fall back, Dee taps gentle fingers to his eyelids and lets them stroke across his mouth.


	3. amor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> David and Diarmuid have a date at their secret place

David had come to get him after he had completed morning prayers. More so collecting him and standing expectantly outside the thick wooden doors, leaning against a small wall. Diarmuid had felt himself blush a little, curly hair tickling his face as he ducked his head. David didn’t reach out a hand, not quite yet, but Diarmuid could feel his fondness stretching between them for that short distance. He could hear the other brothers filtering out to do their various other business behind him, but they were quickly gone from his thoughts as David started to walk confidently away from the main hall.

  
Diarmuid skipped to catch up a little, his hair rippling in the breeze, and his mouth popped open quickly, “Ah!” as they passed near his quarters, and the kitchen, “I just have to- I’ll only be a moment-“

  
David nods and raises a hand a little, holding his stance to signal he won’t leave. Diarmuid returns back with a basket, covered in a white cheese cloth. David nods, raises an eyebrow, and keeps walking, falling into step with Diarmuid as they start towards the meadow. It’s late Spring, the breeze holds the smell of blooming and fruitful pear trees, honey, wild flowers. As they near the forest they can smell and clearly see a carpet of wild garlic covering the floor. The monastery is far from them now, they can’t even hear the crow of the rooster, or the sheep, none of the brothers. Here it is quiet and peaceful, just the whisper of the long grass. The meadow slips downwards into the river on the right, but walking on its left hand side will take you further into the forest. With the monastery far from them now, and Diarmuid’s excitement mounting, their fingers graze against one another more frequently now. Every few moments another brush. Within a few minutes Diarmuid feels the warm push of David’s fingers slip in between his own, widening his. He doesn’t look at David, just bumps against him, closer and closer now. They walk a little farther, another ten minutes and they’re in a closed off glade, wildflowers sprouting up, daisies and buttercups amongst the grass, and the large oak tree that Diarmuid considers theirs. David pulls him more insistently towards the oak tree, which makes Diarmuid’s heart full, the pulling only making more obvious that their hands are connected. Diarmuid can’t help himself, and when David finally pulls them to a stop under the shade of the oak, he leans against him quickly to press a kiss to his cheek.   
His Dovi catches him lightly as he quickly pulls away, only to arrange him closer as they sit down. Dovi’s back against the trunk and Diarmuid under his arm. Diarmuid allows himself to rest his head against Dovi’s chest, listening to his beloved heart beat. As he sighs, David’s hand comes up to stroke his cheek, Diarmuid closes his eyes.

  
“I brought some things for you-“ Diarmuid raises only slightly to collect up his basket, rummaging through and laying everything out neatly on the cheese cloth.   
There’s bread, cheese, apples, pieces of sticky honey cake, and a corked bottle of cordial Diarmuid had been experimenting with all week. Diarmuid has to steel himself when he feels a chaste kiss at the top of his head as he hands Dovi his large portion. He doesn’t know why it brings him a certain strange, tingly, deep-pit-of-your-stomach joy when he sees his David eating enthusiastically, hears his grunts and the messy noises of him enjoying food. David slings an arm around his shoulder to pull him flush with his chest as he looks over the landscape with an apple in his hand. Diarmuid swigs from the cordial bottle, and hands it to David next. David takes a sip immediately and looks at Diarmuid in the eye as he does so, the bubbles go to Diarmuid’s nose as he drinks again, as soon as David hands the bottle back. A back and forth, lip of the glass bottle wet and Diarmuid’s chin dripping with juice just a little.

  
When they’ve finished their lunches, for the most part (Diarmuid saves away the pot of jam for later), he flops onto his back. The leaves dapple light across his face and he squints sometimes when the breeze puts light into his eyes, moving the branches. Dovi lies next to him, too, and the pair of them stare into the distance together. In time Diarmuid gets up and starts to pick small unlucky buttercups around him, daisies too. Dovi is used to this now, merely sighs gently and closes his eyes. As Diarmuid pokes through small wildflowers into David’s hair, David listens to Diarmuid giggling, his sweet breath on his face.   
When Diarmuid let’s himself, allows his shaky fingers to do so, he traces the faint blue veins across David’s eyelids, the marks of freckles upon his nose, the strong cupid’s bow across his lips. David stays as still as a statue, only when Diarmuid begins to hesitate does David push against his hand, asking for him to continue. For the both of them.

  
The sun is a false friend, and leaves far too quickly for either of them. Diarmuid is sure David knows how to read the time from the progress of the sun across the sky, he’s sure he’s seen Dovi mapping out the stars at night, and yet he doesn’t rush Diarmuid along, he doesn’t act as if he knows it’s time to go. He thinks often of the things David could teach him, what he could tell him about the world. He no longer has longings for seeing it himself, not unless it is with David by his side.

  
Eventually when it has become unavoidable, the two of them walk back together. But not before sharing a pot of jam, sticking fingers coaxing into wet mouths, on the walk back Diarmuid feels his cheek itch with sugar. He feels the warmth of David’s palm against his own for the whole way back. He does not let go as he usually does when they reach the outskirts of the farm, and he does not do so when they reach the kitchen garden. They are strangely left undisturbed. When he leaves Diarmuid at his rooms it is with a sad look on his face. Diarmuid does as he always does, and gently knocks their foreheads together on the stoop of his door.

  
“I will see you soon.” David nods, and his thick finger and thumb punches Diarmuid’s chin gently, stroking, until turning on his heel and stalking away.

 

 


	4. Lambing Season

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diarmuid envies the Lamblings.

Diarmuid heard shifting around outside the kitchen and then a meek bleating. He rushed quickly to the door still with a wooden ladle in his hand and sweat beading against his brow.

A pot still bubbles on the firepot, bunches of dried lavender sway on racks above the fireplace. “David? Another one is it?”, the large laybrother nodded, dark curls bobbing into his eyes, and shuffled into the small kitchen. He had to duck to fit under the doorway with a little bundle wrapped in his arms.

David set to work as did Diarmuid - lambing season had trained them both well in this particular dance. Soon enough, David had a piece of muslin cloth dipped in warm sweet milk for the lamb to suck on and a piece of thick fleece around him.

Diarmuid absentmindedly stirred the pot as he flushed. David cradling the lamb and shushing it. Dipping the cloth in milk to let it suck some more. Diarmuid wondered how safe and warm it must feel wrapped in his arms.

As always, he envied the lamb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> handwritten by my boo @honeybun, xoxo

**Author's Note:**

> These little sweet stories were written by my gf honeybun here on AO3.


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